News & Commentary

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Jewel Hall conducted by the ACLU of Michigan about the killing in 2012 of her son Milton by eight police officers. Parts of her interview appear in the video below, which also includes footage of the police killing Milton. Today the ACLU of Michigan is presenting this video at a hearing about racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States. The county prosecutor declined to bring charges against the officers involved, and earlier this year, the Department of Justice also declined to bring charges against them. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

A video introduction by Edward Snowden kicked off a German screening of CITIZENFOUR, which opened the documentary film festival Dok Leipzig on Monday evening.

Twelve Nobel Peace Prize laureates sent a powerful letter to President Obama today, calling on him to lead the nation by reckoning with the Bush administration's torture program, closing Guantánamo, and adhering fully to the United States' legal obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention against Torture. 

The ACLU filed comments today with the FTC urging it and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate whether big data is being used in online marketing in ways that are racially discriminatory. If companies are in fact engaging in this kind of racial discrimination, we urge the agencies to take enforcement action against them.

It has been 15 years since the tragic deaths of Jessica Lenahan's three daughters.

Smartphones and smart refrigerators and smartwatches, oh my.

There are currently 32 states and counting that have marriage equality. This is up from 12 states before we helped Edie Windsor strike down the Defense of Marriage Act in the Supreme Court last June.

Research shows that nearly one in three women will have an abortion by the time she turns 45. Yet, far too often, we still think of abortion as a dirty word, not fit for polite company.

This originally appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of STAND, the ACLU magazine.